General Council Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Location: / South Valley Health Commons / Time: / 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Voting Members Present: Lora Church, Michelle Melendez, Erin Engelbrecht
Non-Voting Participants: David Broudy, Leigh Caswell, Eric Chrisp, Claire Dudley, Anita Feltz, Lorna Marchand, Jerry Montoya, Paul Oostenbrug, Bryan Patterson, Danielle Reed, Angelica Solares , Sam Swift Staff: Enrique Cardiel, Marsha McMurray-Avila, Tracy McDaniel
Agenda Items / Discussion / Action /
1. / Welcome and intros / All present introduced themselves.
2. / Updates on BCCHC activities / Marsha provided an update of health council activities, discussing the written staff report distributed to attendees (and posted at www.berncohealthcouncil.org) .
The first session of the CINCH training academy took place on June 27. The second session will occur on July 26. Facilitated by staff from Media Literacy Project, this training will be focused on effective messaging to various audiences. During the first year of the CDC grant, the training academy is only open to members of the Leadership Team, Advisory Teams, and staff as we build capacity of CINCH leadership. During year 2, the Training Academy will be expanded to include community partners and other stakeholders.
3. / Video Documentary “First Choice: A People’s History” / Michelle Melendez shared a video documentary highlighting the 40-year history of First Choice Healthcare, from its earliest beginnings as part of the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s to its current status as a Federally Qualified Healthcare Center with 9 clinics in 3 counties.
There is more change coming soon. A new facility is currently being constructed in Los Lunas.
It is interesting to note that the areas of concern in the 1960’s are still of concern today. Also, of note, several times during the short film, interviewees mentioned the health council’s three priority areas. Watching this film is a nice reminder that we are part of a greater movement toward health equity that continues on after 40 years.
4. / Process for BCCHC Planning and County Health Profile Updating / Marsha reviewed the BCCHC Planning Summary for 2011-2012, highlighting which activities are currently uncompleted, in progress, and completed. Some items were unable to be completed due to lack of funding. A full day strategic planning retreat will take place in early autumn during which members will collaboratively craft a new planning summary for 2012-2013 based on each of the current priority areas. We are not planning to change the priority areas this year unless there is a compelling reason to do so.
One of the major activities already planned for the upcoming year is the updating of the Community Health Profile. In 2009, the Health Council completed two documents. The first is the full Community Health Profile, which is an extensive 162-page document. The second is the Community Health Profile Highlights, which serves as an executive summary, outlining the key points of the complete Profile. / Date for strategic planning retreat TBA.
5. / Health Profile Update Working Groups / During the meeting, attendees broke off into three groups – one for each priority area – to review the Highlights document and answer 5 questions for each section of the Highlights. Each group was tasked with answering the following questions for different topics: What would you keep? What would you update? What would you change? What would you add? What is in the full profile that should be in the Highlights document? The groups worked on these questions for approximately 45 minutes.
After the groups finished their work, we came back together and discussed the process and next steps.
Several suggestions were offered by attendees:
·  The Health Council’s work could tie into the greater statewide strategic plan, ensuring that we have similar measures for comparison to other areas of the state.
·  Some people would prefer one well-organized document with hyperlinks available online, rather than having two documents that don’t directly correlate to one another.
·  There should be some consideration of who the audience will be when writing the document and deciding what information is the most important to include. In the past, the Health Profile has been used by a number of different entities. How can it serve multiple audiences and how does it guide strategic planning and recommendations? We would like to expand the use of the document, and make it as user-friendly as possible. Do we want to move policy makers or inform the public? Who do we want to move?
·  There were several questions regarding the measures used in the data collection. (How do we measure poverty or substandard housing, for instance?) It would be helpful to have an explicit statement of how these things are measured available in the document. This is particularly of interest to grant writers using the document to state their case for funding.
·  Time series could be included. We can now add 3 -4 years of additional data, and this could be very useful in tracking changes.
·  Would like to see the plan and data linked in the document. Use the Profile as a benchmark/baseline for HC work.
·  Instead of a neutral profile, show the lens through which we look at the work. Move toward action mode, rather than data-dump mode. If we create a forward looking document, we may find that it brings other stakeholders to the table. We can get others involved by providing input on recommendations for action.
·  Not just look at deficits, demonstrate the assets of the communities as well.
How will we do the work to update the profile?
·  Subgroups are likely to fizzle out, and are not the best choice for moving forward.
·  We can work in large groups during the monthly meetings. If we did this, we would need to shorten other areas of meeting time. We could cut out staff updates (relying more heavily on the written Staff Report) and announcements.
·  Have a bi-weekly newsletter for announcements instead of having announcements to create more time for working on the profile.
·  Use strategic planning day to figure this out.
There is no funding to hire a contractor to write the document. Marsha and Tracy will be doing most of the actual writing of the Profile. / Moving forward, we will use a portion of each meeting to work on Health Profile updates, trimming other areas of our meeting time.
5. / Community Updates and Announcements / Send any announcements and updates to Tracy () for distribution to Google Group during the month.
6. / Adjourn / Next BCCHC meeting will be August 15th from 11:30 am -1:30 pm at MR-COG.

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